Real Meaning

What is meaning? Is it the Webster’s definition? How you feel about your life? What people think about you? Or is it money and cars? Clothes and relationships? Is it the people you care about? Your One-and-Only? Your kids? Your precious panting lap-warmer?

Or is it something more. Something better. Something really worth the pains and joys of living. Something… eternal?

I’ve been thinking lately about life, and, as far as I can see, its short-lived and over-rated. People give life too much hype. They don’t realize, when they are small, what its all about. They wake up, do what they’re told(or so they innocently believe), go to school, eat a little, laugh a little, breathe a little, sleep. Childhood is a blur. A year is an eternity. Christmas and birthdays never come fast enough. Everything is special and beautiful to a child. Well, that is until they begin to think that they are “grown-up”.

Ah, yes, the neck-strangling years when they are between eight and sixteen. Their mouths flap nonstop about friends and the opposite sex and cellphones and everything else that doesn’t matter. Constant disrespect and disobedience roll off of their tongues and then, later, they are under the sad impression that they were never in the wrong and the cycle begins all over again until, finally, they wake up from their fairytale dreams that life is easy and there is nothing to worry about.

These are the ages between seventeen and who knows when, because that’s where I’m at right now. The stage when life rears its ugly head and one has to start thinking for herself and making real decisions. Not like the kind of decision I’ve had before, like, “Who should I date?” and “Hmm. Which phone is really right for me?”, but real stuff. Big stuff. Stuff I’ve never even begun to consider, like… What college should I go to? Is college really worth it? What will all of this mean in the end? I begin to realize that life is like a flicker of light: its here then its gone and nothing I ever did ever meant anything. I begin to realize that death happens to everyone, and that I am doomed to die. Even tomorrow, I could die. Even this very evening, I can die. I am not immune to death. It will happen, and its just a reality. I have no power over the matter.

People say, “Shelly. You’re so dramatic. Its no big deal! Of course death happens. Its a proven fact.” No. You don’t understand. Death is real. Its not some fairytale thing that only happens in storybooks and over the seas. Its happening now. Right now. Someone is being killed this very second and no one is doing anything to help that person. The poor guy probably didn’t think it’d happen today. He didn’t think his brother would come at him with a knife over something like tithing. But it happened, and now his brother has the mark of his blood on his hands, to carry it all of his life. And what does the dead guy have to show for his life? Nothing but an insignificant little plaque amongst the unruly grass of a cemetary.

I hate thinking about how short life is. And it never stops getting shorter. I’m at the end of my rope and I’m only eighteen!

“Worrying about life, huh, Shelly-bean?” I jumped in surprise and looking up from my laptop and to the face of my mother. I mentally cringed as I once again noticed the agelines at the sides of her mouth and at the creases of her eyes. Wrinkles that showed her life story. I could tell how she’d used her face through all the years of her life: just as much laughing and smiling as she had frowned and cried. But she was at the end of her rope, too. Had been for thirty more years than I had.

“Pretty much. Just decided to jot a bit down.” I stared at my virtual journal and sighed. “I mean, my whole life is nothing. I have no purpose that matters, and I could die any minute. What’s the point of life? I just don’t get it!” My voice began to fill with tears and a lump rose in my throat. The princess-pink bed sank forward as my mother eased herself down onto the mattress. I could hear the pops in her back and the crackles in her legs as her old body relaxed from the stress of standing. She sat there, still for a moment, staring at the bluebirds building a nest in the mulberry tree out my window. Her eyes were a crystalline blue, and her hair was short and streaked with grey and silver. She was chubby, but I could still make out the beautiful face I remembered from my youth.  “Mum, I just really don’t get it.”

“I have the same concerns, Michelle.” I winced at the use of my real name, and shut my computer. My mother never used my real name. It was always “Shelly”, “Shelly-bean”, or some other nickname. But never “Michelle”. I shifted on the bed and uncrossed my legs, getting ready for what was bound to be a long talk. My mother looked away from the window and at me with stoic eyes. “Death is as real as the ground we walk on.”

I nodded and brought my knees to my chest. I knew it was. Death… was imminent. It will happen to the oldest man and the youngest woman. To the healthiest youth to the sickest of diseased. We are all diing. All the time. So whats the point? I looked at my mom and heaved a sigh. “There’s nothing we can do to last forever. To mean something. Everything’s already been done.”

“…Yes, I suppose that is true. ‘There is no new thing under the sun’, after all.” I shook my head in agreement, and leaned back on my throw pillows. I was glad my mom agreed. I’d told everyone the same things, but they just looked at me with guarded eyes and laughed me off. I appreciated the fact that at least someone was truely listening; really hearing what I said.

My mom leaned back on my bed, sighing in relief. She drew her gaze to mine and seemed to cradle my stare in her eyes; smooth and soothing. I remembered how much I resembled the pictures of her at my age, clothes and hair vastly different, but features eerily similar, my nose a little longer, forehead a little wider, but still a spitting image of eachother. I glanced in the mirror on my bed stand. I had my father’s dark green eyes, though. A tear tumbled down my cheek.

“Mom,” I said, voice cracking, “Why isn’t he still here?” I felt like a river was cascading down my face as the sorrow overwhelmed my heart. Today was the first anniversary of his death. I still, to this moment, couldn’t fathom the loss of meaning to my life. I remembered his strong arms, lifting me onto his shoulders to watch the fireworks. I remembered being subtly tickled with his tie during church, the twinkle of life and love in his eye. The spark that lit up my world, like a single match in the dark night.

But now he was extinguished, all the fault of a single rainy night and his unwillingness to sit still for more than an hour. I cried, barely caring that my mother was there. It was a shock to cry after so long. The release felt good, and I didn’t have the desire to stop until my mom put a hand to my shuddering shoulder. Still sniffling, I brought my stinging, flowing eyes up to hers, shamed by the fact that she was crying, too.

“I know it hurts, Michelle. But Hank knew what life was all about, and I know he would not want you wasting your days away–the important days when you’re supposed to be preparing to be the woman you will one day be–wallowing after his lost life and pondering the meaning in it all.”

“But, Mom, I–” I couldn’t croak out another word. She didn’t understand. Everything was just too hard.

“Shell, you know what life is about.”

I sighed. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your heart, and all your mind.’” I answered, resigned to let my mom hear what she wanted to hear. Suddenly, she reached forth and grasped my chin between knuckle and thumb. I looked her straight in the eye.

“And don’t forget it.” She said, her serious voice resounding  off the walls of my room. She let go of my face, and stood, bones groaning in protest yet again. She dragged herself from my room with an unexpected dignity, and I shook my head in frusteration.

She was so delusional, believing so steadfastly in something so… pointless. Life. Love. The persuit of happiness. All useless.

I wiped the water from my eyes and sat up on my bed. I hefted the computer back to my lap and began my typing yet again. I could understand my mom’s ferocity about it all, really. She was just worried that I was missing her point, but I was pretty sure she was missing mine. She just couldn’t embrace what I had: there is no meaning to anything. With that thought, I glanced over the rant I had made, and froze in realization. Here I was, droning about the meaning to life, when the entry I had just typed had no point, no emphasis. No real meaning. How could I go on and on about God making no meaning, when I myself hadn’t bothered to put one on what I myself had made.

As the realization struck, I began to think a little deeper. If God had created us for something, it had to be companionship with Him, right? I mean, that would be His only logical goal. Someone to love Him for what He is, right? And hadn’t that been exactly what Mom had meant? With all thy soul… All thy heart…. All thy mind… It was so simple, clear and clean-cut now.

“Mom!” I hollered down the hall as I streaked out of my room. She poked her head out of the kitchen, eyes wider than the Hoover Dam, “I get it! I totally get it!” I yelled, and ran into her arms. “It was the point the whole time, and I never got it until now.” It was what my mom had been trying to tell me all year, it was why Mom smiled at the funeral. It was why I never had to wander through darkness without Dad in my life. It was the whole point to life!

Mom wrapped her swallowing arms around my neck, and I had never been so greatful for her.

“I raised a good kid,” She chuckled into my hair, and I squeezed her harder. “I really did.” I smiled, and my mind was made up. I knew whether I’d go to college. I knew what I was going to do for a living, though it wouldn’t pay much.

And I’ve never wondered about the meaning of life again.